Microsoft Research New England: 2012 in Review

Microsoft Research New England: 2012 in Review

Posted by Jennifer Chayes, managing director of Microsoft Research New England

It’s been another year of great research, growth, and connection at Microsoft Research New England. We’ve had more than 350 academic visitors this year, many of whom have engaged deeply with other Microsoft Research researchers and with our product groups.

The Social Media Collective (SMC) had an amazing year. We added three prominent researchers—Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford, and Mary Gray—to the SMC. Together with danah boyd, there is no doubt that we now have the leading social-media-research group worldwide. Our SMC researchers and visitors have done groundbreaking research on questions concerning youth and marginalized populations online, as well as in the study of social interactions around online music and games.

We continued to have great results from our Empirical Economics program. Susan Athey and Markus Mobius, now joined by Justin Rao of Microsoft Research New York City, drive an ongoing engagement with more than a dozen external economists on empirical questions concerning online advertising, business models for our online properties and the cloud, and health-care economics.

Moshe Tennenholtz’s efforts in the Herzliya branch of Microsoft Research New England have been phenomenal. It has been the first year of the Microsoft-Technion e-Commerce Research Center, and there already are 10 ongoing projects among Microsoft Research researchers, Microsoft product groups, and Technion faculty and students. Moshe and collaborators also delivered a new type of floor pricing to Microsoft’s Online Services Division.

Perhaps most excitingly, Microsoft Research New England researchers have welcomed their new colleagues at Microsoft Research New York City and have begun to work with them on problems at the boundary of computer science and the social sciences. I have high hopes for these interactions, as our amazing researchers bring their different approaches—theoretical, empirical, and computational—to these incredibly important problems.